Screenshot & PDF Generator with Smart Crawling

Sophisticated Apify Actor that captures screenshots and PDFs of websites with intelligent crawling for complex web applications. Perfect for documentation, archiving, monitoring, and testing purposes.

Features

✨ Flexible Capture Modes

• Screenshots (PNG or JPEG)
• PDFs with customizable formats
• Both simultaneously

🎯 Smart Waiting & Scrolling

• Auto-scroll to load lazy elements
• Wait for specific CSS selectors
• Network idle detection
• Custom timeout delays
• Perfect for SPAs and dynamic webapps

🕷️ Intelligent Crawling

• Configurable depth (0-5 levels)
• Same-domain restriction
• Per-domain page limits
• Automatic link discovery

🎨 Customization Options

• Custom viewport sizes (320x240 to 3840x2160)
• Full-page or viewport captures
• Element removal (hide cookie banners, chat widgets, etc.)
• Custom cookies and headers

📦 Organized Storage

• Screenshots and PDFs in key-value store
• Metadata in dataset with links
• Unique file naming with URL hash + timestamp

Quick Start

Basic Usage

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://apify.com" }
  ],
  "captureMode": "both",
  "fullPage": true,
  "waitForNetworkIdle": true
}

Advanced Example

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://example.com" }
  ],
  "captureMode": "both",
  "fullPage": true,
  "viewportWidth": 1920,
  "viewportHeight": 1080,
  "crawlDepth": 1,
  "maxPagesPerDomain": 10,
  "waitForNetworkIdle": true,
  "waitTime": 2000,
  "removeElements": [
    ".cookie-banner",
    "#chat-widget"
  ],
  "screenshotFormat": "png",
  "pdfFormat": "A4"
}

Input Parameters

Field	Type	Default	Description
startUrls	array	required	List of URLs to capture
captureMode	string	"both"	"screenshot", "pdf", or "both"
fullPage	boolean	true	Capture entire page or just viewport
autoScroll	boolean	true	Scroll page to load lazy elements
viewportWidth	integer	1920	Viewport width (320-3840)
viewportHeight	integer	1080	Viewport height (240-2160)
crawlDepth	integer	0	Crawl depth (0 = start URLs only)
maxPagesPerDomain	integer	50	Max pages per domain
waitForSelector	string	""	CSS selector to wait for
waitForNetworkIdle	boolean	true	Wait for network idle
waitTime	integer	1000	Additional wait time (ms)
removeElements	array	[]	CSS selectors to hide
screenshotFormat	string	"png"	"png" or "jpeg"
screenshotQuality	integer	90	JPEG quality (1-100)
pdfFormat	string	"A4"	Paper format
maxRequestsPerCrawl	integer	100	Total page limit

Output

Dataset

Each page creates an entry with metadata and links to files:

{
  "url": "https://example.com",
  "title": "Example Page",
  "timestamp": "2025-12-04T13:00:00.000Z",
  "screenshotUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/...",
  "pdfUrl": "https://api.apify.com/v2/...",
  "viewport": "1920x1080",
  "depth": 0
}

Key-Value Store

Binary files in organized collections:

• screenshots: PNG/JPEG files (prefix: screenshot-)
• pdfs: PDF documents (prefix: pdf-)

Tips for Complex Webapps

Single Page Applications (SPAs)

{
  "waitForNetworkIdle": true,
  "waitTime": 2000,
  "waitForSelector": "#app-loaded"
}

Authentication

{
  "cookies": [
    {
      "name": "session_token",
      "value": "your-token",
      "domain": "example.com"
    }
  ]
}

Remove Distractions

{
  "removeElements": [
    ".cookie-consent",
    "#intercom-container",
    ".live-chat-widget"
  ]
}

Local Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run locally
apify run

# Deploy to Apify
apify login
apify push

Resources

• Crawlee Documentation
• Apify SDK
• Playwright

License

ISC